


Not For Long

by TriplePirouette



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Rumbelle Secret Santa 2013, dystopian au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 07:51:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2261766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriplePirouette/pseuds/TriplePirouette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Marquesasarts for the Rumbelle Secret Santa (as a replacement Secret Santa) from the prompt “dystopian AU” Set in a time after the third season mid series finale. It was never meant to be for long...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not For Long

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MarquesadeSantos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarquesadeSantos/gifts).



> Beta by the lovely wonderwoundedhearers! marquesaarts, it’s my pleasure to be your replacement Santa. I hope you enjoy this!

Hansel pushed Grace forward, his hand leaving yet another stain on her mottled dress. “Hurry up, or she’ll get you!” His voice mocked, there was only the faintest hint of fear in his teasing.

Gretel stepped between her brother and friend, shoving the younger boy away. “She’s just as likely to get you, too, you know.” Gretel grabbed Grace’s hand and slowed, looking up at the old, crumbling castle in the dusk of the surrounding forest.  Her voice dropped to a dark whisper, “She could get any one of us.”

The warmth of the voice behind them wasn’t a surprise. The soft accent slid over them like a warm blanket, like home, when it was sorely needed. “You know we won’t let that happen.”

Grace turned and tossed her body into that of the woman behind her, hugging her around the waist tight, pressing her face into the fading blue of her bodice. “Miss Belle,” she started, her voice muted by being pressed against the woman’s stomach, “has anyone heard about papa?”

“No my dear,” she whispered to the girls hair as she held her tight, “not today. But Neal, Emma, and your Papa are due back before the new moon. Any day now, so don’t you worry. But we do need to get inside.” Belle held out her arm and ushered Hansel and Gretel forward, Grace clinging to her dress tightly.

The small group walked through the tattered garden as the darkness slowly stole over the land. The shimmer of the protection spell above them was barely visible, but it was there. Passing through the doorway to the great Dark Castle, Gretel could feel the magic like static on her skin. Belle could see Henry from the doorway, sitting on the edge of one of the few front facing windows and staring out into the distance.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” he told them, never turning his eyes from the horizon, “you should wash up.” His voice cracked at the end, reminding Belle of the months that had passed, of the inches he grew, of the tiny whiskers just starting out on his chin.

“Go on, kids,” Belle pushed them deeper into the castle, “I’ll catch up in a few minutes.” She watched them go, their steps slower, heavier than they had been just a few months ago. They disappeared through the dark halls, used to the floors and walls to the point where they no longer needed a lantern to guide them through the labyrinth that only a few short years ago they would have been terrified to attempt.

“Why do we stay here, Belle?” Henry turned, his legs swinging over the edge of the ledge in a childlike manner, his sad eyes so much older than his age. “Why do we hole up here and just wait?”

Belle took his hand, squeezing tight. His pants were too short by a few inches and she knew under his shoes his socks were threadbare. She tried to keep up, but there were so many things to be done and he always put himself at the end of the list.

His voice was lighter when he spoke again. “I can see you imagining the holes in my socks.”

“I’ll mend them tomorrow.” Her voice was strong resolved. “Your Mom and Dad and the rest of the group will be back soon. Can’t let them think I haven’t been taking care of you!” Her smile faltered, the tears she held back ready to drop any second.

Henry sighed and slid down form the window, hugging Belle tight as his voice danced with emotion through the octaves of puberty. “This is all my fault.”

She held her near grandson close, wishing his coat didn’t seem so tight around the shoulders. “You know that it is not. It’s not anyone’s fault at this point. So many actions, so many spells, so much darkness… you know it isn’t your fault. Please tell me you know that.” Her voice broke as the tears finally fell, thinking of all the thin coats and tight shoes and things that needed doing. “Too much magic, too much darkness.”

Henry held her tighter for a moment, his voice a whisper of wonder as his memory of the day Rumplestiltskin stabbed his own father forced itself in and out of focus. “He did it for you, you know. He didn’t know. He couldn’t have. He did it for you, and my dad. And even me. He didn’t know.”

Belle nodded and pulled away. “I know. I think… I don’t want them to see me like this.” Her hands smoothed over her housedress, stained and worn with time and hard labor. The hem was fraying in the back and she’d tied the bodice with a few lengths of ribbon that she’d found and tied together after her laces broke. Her own stockings were mended so many times she was sure they were more mending than stocking, but she couldn’t let the kids see her broken, see her stained and falling apart.

Henry nodded. “I’ll make your excuses and bring you a plate?” He smiled, and for a moment Belle could see the boy he had been. She could imagine him before she knew him: young and full of hope and imagination.

He was all but broken now.

“Please,” she whispered. “I’ll be down for bedtime, though.”

~*~

* * *

 

The fire was warm across the great room, casting a glow across the clean scrubbed faces of nearly three-dozen children of Storybrook. Once upon a time they’d been from this very forest, told scary stories about the very castle that they were hiding in, but that time hadn’t been nearly as dangerous for them.

“She’ll cook you with an apple in your mouth!”

“I heard she’ll use your blood to wash her hair and grind your bones into toothpaste!”

“That’s not true! Can’t be! You can’t make toothpaste out of people.”

The voice of the arguing children cut through him. He wasn’t surprised at the topic. They were becoming bolder about it, talking about it more and more, and he couldn’t begrudge them the opportunity to take some of their power over the situation back.

“None of that’s true! The Evil Queen herself doesn’t eat you. It’s the Blind Witch.”

That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt him.

Henry shivered as he took his plate from Tinkerbelle. “They need it tonight,” she nodded towards the kids, their voice growing louder with each outlandish theory. “Their parents have been gone too long, and it’s been too cold and muddy to play.”

The fairy was right. He smiled tightly as he spoke. “Put a plate aside for Belle?” Tink nodded, and Henry walked around the edge of the room, watching the kids’ faces. She was right, of course. She often was. When it came to the kids, Tink and Belle understood them better than anyone. The Dwarfs were mainly there for maintenance and manpower, fourteen hands were always better than two, and Archie… well, he was taking care of the sick ones the best he could over in the east wing with Ashley.

Henry was only there because he had been too young to leave, and couldn’t stand to see the terror in his mother’s eyes after that first time he’d followed them.

They were fighting The Evil Queen. His birth parents, his blood grandparents, his friend’s parents… they were all fighting his adoptive mother.

Everything in this world had a price, and his and Emma’s return had one that no one had foreseen: Regina forgot him entirely.

She did, however, hold some dark memory of him, because it twisted and turned until she vowed to turn every child in all the kingdoms into mere bones.

He shivered, dropping his spoon and splattering stew against his chest.

It’s why the children were here. Belle was wrong: it was his fault and he knew it. But it was also his to fix. If he couldn’t fix it by fighting, he’d fix it by helping keep these children, the ones who hadn’t disappeared those first few nights, safe.

He shoved the stew down his throat. It was soupy- Tink wasn’t the best cook among them- but it served it’s purpose. It filled him and warmed him and with each bite his resolve to find a way to save them all from there in the protected fortress of the Dark Castle, intensified.

~*~

* * *

 

They’d turned the vast ballroom at the heart of the castle into their communal bedroom. It had been because it was easy at first: the bedrooms of the castle were too far apart and too hard to keep warm. A few curtains and dividers, and they’d had a veritable barracks set up. Each adult took a night in the tiny bed at the entrance to the room, watching over the children and straining to hear the first signs of tears or nightmares, but Belle came every night.

Belle’s ritual started with the youngest ones. Boys and girls together they got a bedtime story. Sometimes she pulled a volume from the library and read it by candlelight. Sometimes she made a story up, or told one from the other world from memory. She used voices and sound effects and captured their imaginations. Most nights, the older kids listened, desperate to feel the excitement that the littlest toddlers felt when Belle would get carried away with her tales.

From there she tucked each one of the little ones in. They shared large mattresses across the stone floor, tucked in their own little blanket with their own little pillow, sharing the few stuffed dolls and toys they had left.

She’d pull the curtain then head to the boys side, taking away their toy swords and quieting them with her soft voice and warm smile, tucking them in. Once they were all warm and snug in their own cots, she ventured over to the corner that the older girls had claimed, their cots pushed together and caddy corner so that no girl was ever more than an arm’s length away from a hand to hold in the night, so different from the neat rows of the boys cots.

They would make a circle. No one could ever hear what they said, but the whispers and giggles often gave way to sniffles. They were tucked in, too, and she snuffed the largest of the lanterns on her way out when it wasn’t her night to stay.

Henry shuffled on his cot, smiling up at Belle as she watched the smoke rise from the last candle she put out. “Feeling any better?”

“Yes,” she whispered softly, laying a hand on his shoulder. “We have a job, Henry. And you’re right- he did it out of love. When he killed his own father, he did it so you could have a father. And now, we have to make sure your father, and their fathers…” she held back a moment and bit her lip, “and their fathers have kids to come home to.”

She walked away, closing the door behind her quickly.

She disappeared every night. No one was allowed in the west wing except Belle. No one knew what was in there, and no one dared ask. Sometimes she was gone a few minutes; sometimes it was the entire night. Henry lay down, feeling his toe poke through his sock again. Tomorrow, he just might let Belle mend it.

~*~

* * *

 

The west wing was dark, filled with cobwebs and cold winds that made Belle always feel like she was trespassing. But she knew she was welcome. She was the only one who was.

She slipped her shoes along the cobblestones, moving by memory in the dark, her hand sliding across the same slip of smooth wall to her right, counting the doors by their handles until she reached the fourth and final one.

It stuck. She had to press hard, just like every time, and whisper his name. She had to remind him it was her. It gave way after that.

She didn’t think it would move for anyone else. Not a fraction of an inch.

Inside was a bed, plain and tall it was far less ornate than most of the furniture in the rest of the castle. The dark linens hung from the posts ominously, not moving even with the rush of air from the door sweeping through the room.

She always closed the heavy door behind her, just in case. No one could know. Not one single soul. “Today was hard,” she whispered, always afraid of being overheard, even so far away from everyone else. “Henry is growing. So are the other children, but on Henry… He’ll look like Neal before long.”

Belle lit a single candle from the bedside then slipped off her shoes. She slid her arm between the curtains and slid through them, climbing onto the mattress, careful to avoid the bed’s occupant. He didn’t move. The only way she knew he heard her was the light softening in the wrinkle in his brow. He was so weak, and concentrating so hard. “He knows. At least, I think he’ll know. He’s putting the pieces together. He’ll figure out you’re here before long. Even Tinkerbelle is starting to question the idea that her magic is strong enough to protect the castle on it’s own, but she’s not as curious as he is.”

Belle set the candle in the holder on the headboard and gently took his limp hand in hers. “I’ve thought of telling him, you know. He carries so much guilt. So much. Giving him a goal- asking him to help take care of you, to help find a way to bring you back to us for real…”

For the first time his hand tightened and his brow furrowed. It was the first real movement she’d ever seen from him. It was like she could hear him saying no, the echo of his voice bouncing off the curtains without ever having been there.

“I know,” she pleaded, caressing his hand in hers. “Just think on it, will you?” She let out a deeply held breath and slid her body next to his, resting her head on his shoulder gently, the magic coursing through and within him tickling her skin. “This can’t be for long. This was never meant to be for long. You’ll have to fight her. You’re the only one who can now.”

Belle twined her fingers with his, closing her eyes and letting the quiet wash over her. “This was never meant to be for long.”

 


End file.
